BOCC faces opposition on Open Meetings Act violations

EDDY COUNTY — Eddy County Commissioners faced contention from two residents regarding the previous board's violations of the Open Meetings Act during a board meeting Tuesday.

The New Mexico Office of the Attorney General found the previous board to be in violation of the OMA for failing to provide specific descriptions for multiple 2014 commission meetings, according to a May letter to the commission. The current commissioners were given the opportunity to cure the violations at Tuesday's meeting by voting again on the past closed meeting items.

Cas Tabor, the county's attorney, said he discussed the letter with the Office of the Attorney General following the finding of the violations. The letter said county employee raises, including one given to County Manager Rick Rudometkin, were invalid because they had been approved in closed meetings with generic agenda descriptions. Rudometkin's salary was increased twice in 2014, raising his salary from $120,000 per year to $172,000 a year in total, according to documents in the AG's letter.

Rudometkin declined to comment.

But Tabor said Tuesday that the employee raises were not approved in closed meetings, but rather in open budget meetings.

"They looked at the April 15 and the May 6 minutes and then weren't able to visualize the fact that there was a closed session and then there was a budget meeting where personnel salaries, capital outlay, all the different aspects of budgeting (were discussed)," Tabor said. "Every department of the county was discussed in an open meeting April 15 and May 6."

He said the AG's office dropped multiple violations, but that he agreed to keep the raises on the agenda for Tuesday's meeting.

"They admitted their confusion about the votes that were at the end of these budget hearings," Tabor said about his discussion with the AG's office. "And that's why a number of the items were withdrawn and only these six were put on the agenda today."

However, one resident was unsatisfied with the explanation and raised his voice from the back of the room.

"You're having this meeting because you did not give the public an opportunity to comment before you voted," said Dan Banks, an Eddy County resident. County commissioner Royce Pearson ended Bank's comment by asking if he would like to be escorted out of the room.

"Royce, you're going to have to escort a bunch of people out if you do that," said Ronald Barron, the resident who filed the original complaint to the AG's office.

The raises continued to be a hot topic of discussion at the end of the meeting as well, when both Banks and Barron decided to give public comments.

Banks' speech addressed the same issue that he had brought up earlier in the meeting. He said the county's residents did not have enough notice prior to the raises and that the county manager and assistant county manager were paid too highly.

"Eddy County is the second highest paid management team in the State of New Mexico," Banks said. "What are we getting for $304,000?"

Barron continued to denounce the vote made by the current board earlier in the meeting during his remarks, saying that because some of the commissioners were not present on the board at the time of the raises, they were not qualified to vote.

"How can someone that wasn't here, in the commission, wasn't county commissioner, make motions to vote on something that they weren't in closed session for?" Barron asked. "That I don't understand."

Three members of the current board, including Susan Crockett, Glenn Collier and Royce Pearson were members of the board at the time. Stella Davis and James Walterscheid were not.

Five other 2014 agenda meeting items found to be in violation of the OMA, including a motion to join a lawsuit involving the Endangered Species Act, were also passed at Tuesday's meeting.